In the spring of 2020, nursing homes were in the news and under considerable scrutiny because so many had patients with COVID-19.
Many went into lockdown to keep their residents and staff safe.
Nursing homes had been under the microscope long before the coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2 that resulted in the respiratory illness COVID-19, hit this country.
In a 2017 study of nursing homes, many of these facilities around the country were found to be woefully deficient and below average when it came to patient care and overall cleanliness of the facility.
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Many of those facilities have worked to be better and improve. One of those nursing homes that turned itself around and got back to a proper standard of care was Riverside Health and Rehab in Charleston, South Carolina.
Riverside Health and Rehab had regulatory problems and required participation in the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Special Focus Facility Program in April 2017 based on historical inspection results.
With the support of its current management team and dedicated employees, Riverside continues to be committed to providing quality care for its residents.
Part of their commitment includes cooperating with CMS and the state of South Carolina by participating in regular survey inspections, which have consistently found that the care in their facility continues to improve.
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In fact, they are happy to say that based on the satisfactory findings of every inspection since joining the program, Riverside graduated from the Special Focus Facility Program in May 2019.
Their residents remain their first priority and they continue working hard to achieve their goal of providing the highest quality care possible in a home-like environment.
“I am really proud of the staff that we do have, the residents and also the families of the residents because it was a joint effort,” explains Jerrolyn Montgomery-Smalls, Administrator, Riverside Health and Rehab. “All of us had to come together and work hard and place our residents as our first priority. We had to change the culture of the facility. We plan to keep providing that quality of care that our residents very much deserve.”
With approximately 15,600 nursing homes in this country according to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), one would hope that if a nursing home is in the future of your loved one, you would find one that is dedicated to being the best facility it can be and doing all it can to correct errors where it has fallen short just like Riverside Health and Rehab did.
